Category Archives: The Rest Of Your Life

The acceptance of shortcomings is a strength. This message resounds, as always, in all traditions, loud and clear: Mistakes are part of being human. The real meaning of “sin” has to do not with committing evil deeds, not with willfully breaking laws, not even with the act of “falling short.” The term sin classically signifies not an action but the state of falling short, a situation of alienation from reality. One brilliance of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it never uses the term sin, a word hopelessly overloaded with convoluted meanings, but talks instead of the “defects of character” and the “shortcomings” of those who are “alcoholics.” For sin has become a word of religion, of absolutes; shortcomings are words of humanity, a concept in tune with the understanding that we are imperfect.
And if we do “fall short”? That very awareness of “falling short” implies two related realities: First, we are trying, and second, we need to try again. There is no failure here, for spirituality, as the ancients reminded over and over again, involves a continual falling down and getting back up again. That is why humility—the knowledge of our own imperfections—is so important, and that is why spirituality goes on and on and on, a never-ending adventure of coming to know ourselves, seeing ourselves clearly, learning to be at home with ourselves. The great need is for balance—when we are down, we need to get up; and when we are up, we need to remember that we have been, and certainly will be again, “down”.

It was a large meeting, well over two hundred people. At one end of the room stood the canister of regular coffee; at the other end, the pot of decaf. Conversation around the first coffeepot centered on a man who was clearly depressed and afraid. “I just feel like I’m at the end of my rope,” he admitted. “It’s one damned thing after another. Nothing seems to be going right. This week my dog died, my kids came down with strep throat, I can’t keep my mind on my work, my wife and I are fighting constantly. I just don’t know how I’m going to make it.” “Well, son,” an old-timer said gently, “at least you didn’t take a drink today.” The conversation at the other end of the room centered on a man who exuded good cheer. “I just feel so wonderful,” he was saying. “What a week this has been! I got a promotion at work; my daughter is graduating from college with honors; my wife and I are like newly married lovers. And just yesterday I had the best golf game of my life!” “It all sounds great,” another old-timer said gently. “But remember … you’re an alcoholic. Just one drink will destroy it all.

The point of Humility is to find a balance, that place in the middle of life’s teeter-totter that allows one foot to reside on the side of “god/saint/angel” and the other on the side of “worm/sinner/beast.” From this perspective, A.A.’s most significant contribution to the tradition of a spirituality of imperfection can be summed up in two words: sober alcoholic.

Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles above personalities.

A hallmark of 12 step recovery programs is the offer of anonymity to participants, but the principle goes deeper than just not revealing last names.

In order to keep the focus on principles and not personalities, personal anonymity should be maintained at all levels of participation in 12 step fellowship — in meetings, in 12th step work, and even in sponsorship. Anonymity is maintained not so much for the protection of the individual as for the protection of the program.

Pleading prayer of desperation, “Please God, please God, let me come home from the wars.” As far as I know, I have never read that anywhere. It came out of a heart filled with despair and anguish and self-reproach and self-hatred. But I knew the minute I heard it that the key word was home … home. It was coming out of a guy who had never ever, in his life, felt at home.
A home is where the heart finds rest and renewal. That’s where coming home is. I am far enough along in the journey now to be able to see that there is only one ultimate coming home, and that is the final, total, complete, surrender of self to a Power greater than myself. I’m also brave enough today to believe that there will come a day, there will be a place sometime, somewhere, someday, there will be an altar or a confessional, a mountain or a valley … probably in all likelihood .. just a plain, everyday, run-of the-mill AA meeting, where I will finally no longer pull back and say, “Oh, my God, no, no, don’t ask that of me, don’t take that away from me too.”
And when that moment comes, then I know that I will have finally come home. In the meantime, I am more at home here than anywhere I have ever been in my life. I’m more at home here for a very simple reason … you have never, ever asked anything of me … therefore I have been able to give you what I could afford.
What I’m trying to do tonight is to tell you that I have made a return, for as T. S. Eliot said, “There will never be any end from exploring, and the end of all our exploration will be to return to the place where we started and to see it for the first time.”
That is why I tell you, it took something that almost killed me to return me finally to the place where I started, to see it for the first time, and to return to you tonight and tell you that this journey has been worth everything I have been asked to pay to make it.

The first question I have to answer is; Can I stay away from the first drink?

“So, it seemed to me the answer to this thing lies in do I believe I’ve got it and do I believe it can kill me? If the answer to that is yes, then it doesn’t matter a damn whether it is a physical disease, a spiritual disease, an emotional disease, a mental disease, or a combination of all of them. The fact remains I’ve got to buy whether or not I think it is a killer disease. If the answer to that is yes, then comes the last question, and that is … Would I rather live than die? And, if the answer to that is yes, then you’re finally up against it. You’re up against will I, can I, stay away from the first drink? Can I stay away from the first drink? I had answered this many, many times before and so have all of you. We’ve all stayed away from the first drink for varying lengths of time. I stayed away once for a year and-a half with no trouble at all. So I knew I could stay away from the first drink.”

“I separated the state of sobriety from the state of my soul, from the state of my health, from the state of my finances, from the state of my job, from the state of my love life, if any. I separated it from the state of everything. I simply made up my mind that I would rather live than die, and if I had a disease, I would have to stay away from the first drink, and I knew that if I took all this other stuff from it, if I took the “be a better person” business off of it, I would be able to do it. That night I made a very simple decision and I now know it was the first authentic, 24-carat decision I had ever made in my life, because the minute I made it, I knew I’d be able to do it.”

I promise myself: PromisesTo be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind.To talk, health, happiness and prosperity for all to every person I meet.To make all my friends feel that there is something important within them.To look at the sunny side of everything making my optimism my truth.To think only good thoughts, to work only on good deeds and have only good goals.To not regret the mistakes of the past and go forward creating a future of hope for all.To wear a cheerful face and smile at every living creäture I encounter.To give so much to improvement of self that I don’t have time to criticize others.To be aware of worry, fear and anger but let the Spirit of my Soul shine and dominate the present.

Hi hope you are doing well.
InTheRooms.com is producing the Fort Lauderdale Reel Recovery Film Festival this year, Nov. 4-6 at the Classic Gateway Theatre. This is an excellent marketing tool and your support will benefit the work you are doing. This is the perfect venue to showcase to the South Florida Recovery Community. It also includes time to speak to the attendees, included in packages.
Please take a look and let me know how you would like to participate.
http://intherooms.org/reelrecovery/
Be well and call me if you have questions and to finalize your sponsorship..

Marc J Dunn, RC, TOT
CCAR Certified
mjdunn@bellsouth.net
954-665-3770

InTheRooms.com is producing the Fort Lauderdale Reel Recovery Film Festival this year, Nov. 4-6 at the Classic Gateway Theatre. This is an excellent marketing tool and your support will benefit the work you are doing. This is the perfect venue to showcase to the South Florida Recovery Community. It also includes time to speak to the attendees, included in packages.

InTheRooms.com is producing the Fort Lauderdale Reel Recovery Film Festival this year, Nov. 4-6 at the Classic Gateway Theatre. This is an excellent marketing tool and your support will benefit the work you are doing. This is the perfect venue to showcase to the South Florida Recovery Community. It also includes time to speak to the attendees, included in packages.

Research shows that most people who struggle with addiction are also dealing with a mental health condition, such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder. The technical term for this is dual diagnosis.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), “Among the 20.2 million adults in the US who experienced a substance use disorder, 50.5%—10.2 million adults—had a co-occurring mental illness.”

Proper treatment for mental illness involves professional therapy, not just coping skills. At the end of the day, the question is, Do you want to cope with your issues or heal them?

Combining Coping Skills for Addiction and Therapy

Dual diagnosis treatment isn’t about choosing between coping skills and therapy. Rather, it’s about combining the strengths of addiction coping skills and therapy to promote recovery. It’s about using a holistic model of healing, one that integrates all four levels of self:

The physical level (what we do)

The mental level (what we think and believe)

The emotional level (what we feel)

The spiritual level (who we really are)

In true dual diagnosis addiction treatment, trained clinicians use evidence-based tools and approaches to empower people to both encounter and heal their emotional wounds.

Emotional wounds are like physical ones in that if you open up a wound, it is important to know how to close it back up properly! Trained therapists can help individuals to close those inner wounds with love, compassion, and expertise.

In the process, people tap into the power within them and redirect it for good.

They learn to stop abusing themselves and begin to make self-honoring choices.

They start to counsel themselves and work through the issues that arise when they return to their normal lives.

The aftercare from treatment to normal living requires structure and discipline.

The Rest Of Your Life offers complete lifestyle changes for relapse prevention.

Like this:

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Meister Eckhardt

Some of us are more delusional than others, but delusion and grandiosity are commonly present in most alcoholics. My life was centered on perfection and the projection that I was always right. Saying or expressing thank you never crossed my mind. This wasn’t a compulsive disorder as much as it was arrogance and self-centeredness.

“Selfishness — self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.” Big Book

Several years ago a company recruited me to be its COO. It was an industry I was well acquainted with and the job came with a major increase in pay and responsibility. In my mind it was about time I was to be rewarded for my talents. This was while I was still a sober drunk without a program, steps or recovery.

It didn’t take long for me to alienate most of the employees and cause serious regrets by the owner of the company. My deluded self-absorption convinced me that I was doing a phenomenal job. I exposed company theft, poor decisions by ownership and a total lack of controls. I also did not waste any time letting everyone know how incompetent they had been and what actions we had to take to correct these poor decisions. Of course without any regard for the people I offended or feelings for them.

It took about six months for them tell me my services were no longer needed and I was dismissed. I left with resentments, anger, dishonesty and self-centered righteousness. I had been wronged and told everyone who would listen. Within six more months I was drinking again; much worse than before.

Within another six months I had crashed and burned. I crawled back into AA searching for an answer to the fear that if I drank again I would surely die.

Willingness to be teachable led me to a new path of recovery and a beginning to build a new life and a new mind. The 12 Steps, a sponsor and the unconditional love of people in the fellowship opened me to all the promises of AA.

I heard from one of my co-workers several months after I was dismissed that the owner of the company had remarked after I was gone that he had a God in his life and didn’t need another one.

Now it is time for me to do another 9th Step and make amends for the wreckage I caused with the people who gave me an opportunity that I destroyed. Thank God I learned how in the 12 Steps.

Our Parshat this week has much to think about and apply to our daily life. Two of the stories contain examples of faith and trust that impart the same message.

Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring you a red heifer… Numbers 19:2

This request and proclamation is widely considered the most inane request of our Higher Power. We are asked to purify a cow to protect those who have been defiled, yet the act of purification causes defilement. The wise King Solomon is believed to have said about this statute, “ If this is so, could it be that other commandments, whose purpose I believed to have understood, were more mysterious and profound than I thought?”

And God said”…speak to the rock before their eyes, that it give forth water…” And Moses lifted up his hand, and smote the rock with his staff twice… Numbers 20:8

Later in the same chapter Moses is instructed to speak to a rock so that water may spring forth to provide for the Israelites’ thirst and to demonstrate God’s power and love for the people. Moses became angry with the people’s’ complaining and instead strikes the rock. Consequently God proclaims that Moses will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land.

“… believe in Me to sanctify Me before the people”Numbers 20:12

In our quest for spiritual renewal it becomes clear that understanding or making sense of the journey, what our Higher Power has decided is best for us, is not always possible. Our imperfection requires acceptance and tolerance of others and ourselves. This design for living will result in peaceful existence in a world of good choices.

We don’t have to understand how it works. It is enough that we can believe in it to work. Once our faith is strong, we can continue our spiritual journey.

Like this:

The disease of alcoholism is a gradual deteriorating affliction that devastates entire families and will continue to do so unless the alcoholic member takes action to live a life of sobriety, physically and mentally. In this introduction to alcoholism it is a given that alcoholism affects the person who addicted to alcohol, that person’s family and everyone who interacts with that person.

Consider the following:
• Alcohol dependence and abuse cost the US about $220 billion in 2005. For the sake of comparison, this was greater than the amount of money spent to combat cancer ($196 billion) and obesity ($133 billion).
• An estimated 43% of US adults have had someone related to them who is presently, or was, an alcoholic.
• 6.6 million Minors in the US live with an alcoholic mother or father.
• About 14 million US residents battle an alcohol addiction.
• Greater than 50% of grownups in the US have had knowledge of someone in their immediate family with an alcohol problem.
• Around a quarter of all children experience some form of alcoholism in their families before they turn 18
• 40% of alcoholism is passed down through the gene pool, while the other 60% stems from unknown circumstances.
• 500,000 US Children ages 9-12 are addicted to alcohol.
• Studies show that the offspring of alcoholics have a greater chance of becoming alcoholics themselves than those whose parents are clean.

In the book Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter 2, There Is A Solution, It says:

“But the ex-problem drinker who has found this solu¬tion, who is properly armed with facts about himself, can generally win the entire confidence of another al¬coholic in a few hours. Until such an understanding is reached, little or nothing can be accomplished.”

Furthermore it says,” helping others is the foundation of our recovery.” And in the 12 Steps of recovery it says “… we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics and practice these principles in all of our affairs.”

If our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. Then I believe it is incumbent on me to carry the message of hope in writing as well as in meetings. From the depths of my heart there is an intuitiveness that inspires me to share what I have to come to believe as the result of the 12 Steps and our book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

The enormity of the problems alcoholics experience, both physically and mentally, and the quantity of human beings who have this disease has grown significantly over the last decade. As we understand more about it and learn the devastating long-term effect on the family as well, it is more urgent to get the message to as many as possible. Not only, that there is a solution, but also that no one is better suited to help an alcoholic with recovery than another alcoholic. If we are to arrest this disease and prevent it from further debilitation of our families we must take action. We can stop the spread of alcoholism within our own families. It can end with us. What greater gift could we give our children?